[Disclaimer: Eric Rood will be getting paid to sit on the 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court for this race, punishing drivers for their misdeeds and generally doing his best to maintain order on the racetrack.]

The 24 Hours of LeMons has been in its “experimental college student” phase this year, it seems, testing out the waters of sprint racing and visiting new circuits. This weekend, the crapcan series rolls into prestigious Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, Illinois, but the race format brings a twist: Rather than run a 24-hour race or a two-session race, LeMons will run a non-stop 14-hour race—”Doing Time in Joliet“—Saturday with the checkered flag at midnight. Additionally, Autobahn’s setup includes a North, South, and Full Course layout. The last four races at Autobahn have run the South Course. This race will run the same, except at the race’s halfway point (5 p.m. local), track workers will reconfigure the circuit to add on the 3.56-mile Full Course. LeMons at Autobahn has experienced pretty much a 50/50 split in terms of having foul weather and early-week forecasts call for a 30 percent chance of rain over the weekend.

Most importantly for our readers, this LeMons correspondent will spend Friday and Saturday in BS Inspection and the Penalty Box, respectively, as a member of the LeMons Supreme Court. With the (Dis)Honorable Murilee Martin manning the gavel at his 100th race (!) and judicial newcomer/radial-engine-Toyota-MR2 (above) builder Marc Labranche co-judging, this should allow me to post live updates to Hooniverse again as the race unfolds. Intriguing setup for a great LeMons race? Almost certainly. Read on after the jump for the details.

CLASSES B AND C INTERESTING STUFF

As always, classing is done at the track once the LeMons Supreme Court sees the entries in person. To keep the class races fair and subjective (since your humble correspondent is one of the Supreme Court and will be helping class the cars), I will refrain here from commenting on classing ahead of time. That said, feel free to peruse the 101 unofficial entries.

In lieu of class previews, I’ll take a look at potential overall winners, but before that, let’s briefly discuss some of the great cars that probably won’t win but will instead embody LeMons in the most entertaining ways possible.

#53 LemonAid Racing (Geo Metro) – This entry has been about 18 months in the making. It started its LeMons life as a three-time Class C winner (all at Autobahn, interestingly) with a stock 1.0-liter, three-cylinder engine. Under the bonnet, the team have swapped in a BMW M52 inline six (test fit shown above), at least tripling the horsepower and probably quintupling the reliability issues. It runs and drives, but the team expect much more wrenching Friday and Saturday to get it onto the track. As they say in LeMons, “What could possibly go wrong?”

#403 Anonymous B (Subaru XT) – Somehow, nobody has yet brought Subaru’s super-weird 1980s attempt at a sportscar. And somehow, it will be a Midwestern team that has found one not yet reclaimed by the Rust Fairy. Anonymous, who have run a reasonably quick Honda Civic sedan, will try their hand with the XT this weekend.

#81 Sussbag Crew (Mercedes C230) – This might be the most exciting of all the cars in the field, mostly because this seemed like a one-and-done team (of which there are many in crapcan racing) at their Road America debut. But fret not, this Merc, powered by a Ford Lima plucked directly out of a Pinto, will race again.

#73 Sir Jackie Stewart’s Coin Purse Racing (Ford EXP) – The SJSCPR squad are the only team crazy enough to find and prepare Ford’s Escort-derived two-seater for LeMons. Their auspicious debut at Road America was unfortunately overshadowed by the uplifting triumph of the malignant beast known simply as “The K Car” to most of LeMonsdom. They’ll try again for Index of Effluency glory in Joliet.

#668 2 Wycked (Porsche 924) – This squad, also known as F.A.C.E. Racing in the past, have a Porsche 924. They’ve tossed out its unreliable heap of a four-cylinder powerplant for a GM 4.3-liter V6, also known as An Unreliable Heap (above). The car never seems to run right, the team never seems in a hurry, and everything about this situation is as it should be.

#844 Pabst Blue Racing (Nissan Maxima) – What do you do when your Maxima blows up a motor after its first race? Whey, you pitch the Nissan V6, cut up the interior of the car, and drop a 300-horsepower Cadillac Northstar V8 between the rear axles. Sure, the Northstar is entirely unhappy, but good lord does it sound great.

#8 Charnal House (Geo Metro) – Charnal House won Class B at the Gingerman race on Easter weekend through luck and some seat-of-the-pants emergency management. Still, the Ford Taurus SHO V6 behind the rear axle can really make the NoPro-themed car go. Their Metro is better sorted than the LemonAid, but it will be interesting to see how lap times compare after a few races head to head.

#20 Golden Lake Racing (Ford Mustang) – Yet another team who debuted at Road America. This squad’s 1973 Mustang probably draws the ire of the “HOW IS THAT $500 CAR!!!111!???/” crowd, but if you saw it close up, you’d know it was a basketcase and the team’s claims of yanking it out of someone’s backyard seem entirely reasonable.

#54 Grocery Getter Racing (Jeep Cherokee) – Most hold high hopes for the Jeep in LeMons, particularly after trailblazers Team Petty Cash and TGTW Offroad Racing have had success with theirs. Grocery Getter showed up with an unfinished XJ Cherokee at the New Jersey Motorsports Park debut and only turned 23 laps, but maybe they’ll have it together come Saturday.

#200 Double Jeopardy (Jaguar XJ-S) – Speaking of XJ, Double Jeopardy—who once ran a 4-2-1 Pontiac Fiero—decided to halve the reliability by tripling the cylinder count. Their XJ-S sat in a team member’s yard for a few years before they brought it to Autobahn last summer; they didn’t even bother cleaning all the leaves and stuff out from under the hood. The drivetrain ran like clockwork, but the two-ton behemoth melted the stock brake setup after about five laps (above).

#220 Pocket Deuces (Ford Fiesta) – Comprised of active duty military personnel—Air Force, I believe—the Pocket Deuces squad were absolutely new to racing last summer at their Autobahn debut. They made good at the 24-hour race in Houston and should be vastly improved in this, their third race.

#919 Afunzalo Racing (Fiat X1/9) – This group of Italian car enthusiasts hail from a town I know well: Sandwich, IL, who have the most entertaining police cars in the world. Anyway, Afunzalo debuted at Gingerman and struggled with, well, everything. It is a Fiat, after all.

#928 Scuderia Craptastic (Ford Taurus) – Some may remember this team for their brilliant idea to drop a Mazda 12A Wankel engine into an Opel GT, which worked very poorly. Some may also remember them for, in their second race, supercharging that 12A. This fared very, very poorly. Few will fault them for ditching those awful, awful ideas to run a Ford Taurus.

#29 Boost4 Racing (Volkswagen Golf) – These guys couldn’t catch a break last year. Their first attempt at LeMons build was ruined by an absurd flood to their shop area. They replaced that with a Lexus ES300 (above), which received three penalty laps but subsequently lunched its engine after a single lap, leaving them with -2 laps on the timing sheet. It was all a bit discouraging and looked like another one-and-done team, but they’re back for more with a 1998 VW Golf. Those are reliable, right?

#32 and #132 Speedycop & The Gang of Outlaws (Honda Accord-ion and Toyota MR2) – It’s not a LeMons race if it’s east of the Mississippi River and Speedycop isn’t there. To date, Jeff Bloch (aka Speedycop) and crew have collected one of every single trophy in LeMons except a Class B win. Will he get it?Maybe. Will he plead and plead to get his ’91 MR2 into Class B? Probably.

#92 Unified Partnership of Pentastar Racers (Plymouth Sundance Duster) – What happens when you run a Chrysler P Platform car (Read: K-Car’s younger cousin) at the same race as “The K Car?” The Reliant’s rotten luck rubs off on your extremely capable Duster. The Pentastar Duster is fast but goes through Mitsubishi V6s like…um…a K car goes through everything.

#83 Canadian Border Patrol (Toyota Cressida) – Crapped-out Lexus 1UZ-FE V8s fairly grow on trees in junkyards because no one wants them. I have no idea why because the 1UZ in this car sound amazing at full song and puts out at least 250 horsepower.

#420, #421, #422 The Wonderment Consortium (VW Quantum Syncro, Ford Escort, Honda Civic shown above) – These three cars were themed together at the Easter race to win Organizer’s Choice and will, by all accounts, be themed together again. Only the Escort—this writer’s former LeMons car—hasn’t been completely terrible.

#31 Hard 8 Racing (Ford Contour) – This team at one time had some kind of incredibly Malaise-Era-approved G-Body Monte Carlo. There was some kind of digital display on a little steering wheel panel that had long ago stopped working, but it was probably pretty snazzy when it was new. For about three weeks. Anyway, they sold that chunk of crap and will run a less-exciting Ford Contour.

#25 Butt Sweat and Beers (Volkswagen Rabbit) – This, LeMoneers, is how you name a race team.

#777 Muenster Energy (Honda Prelude) – And this team name ain’t bad, either.

I’ll spend a few extra minutes on the race’s longshot: the two CRXs from Team Gutty (top) and Team Slightly-Less-Than-Credible (bottom). I’m not sure if they’re directly related, but they always seem to run together. Team Gutty have possibly been building low-buck racers for as long as anyone, having competed in many Grassroots Motorsports Magazine $2000 Challenges. Their Hondas are usually reliable and quick enough for a Top 10 run. Both teams will need some luck (or rain) to win outright, but anything can happen in LeMons.

I'll be there with the EXP, I'm Mike S, hope to meet you at some point, have a good race!

Dan

I cant wait to get the Maxillac on the track! Go Pabst Blue Racing!

smalleyxb122

Quick question: Are the lap totals going to be weighted? Like, can fewer full course laps make up a deficit of south course laps by a factor roughly equivalent to their length difference?

Eric Rood

I asked this question to Roland at Specialty Timing, actually, and the answer is this:

Scoring will be based solely on laps counted, regardless of length. Yes, this may screw teams who blew up early in the race and then fix it, but TBH, the difference for them between, say P78 and P71 is not a huge concern to race organizers. The teams who will be competing to win will be running the whole time, so they'll all be basically the same distance at the front of the classes.

Why score it this way?

(1) It's LeMons. The winners only matter so much, which probably contradicts how many words I attribute to said winners. But hey, cognitive dissonance is at the heart of LeMons.

(2) More importantly, moving the timing loops or trying to calculate distance instead of laps for 100 cars in real time is way too much of a PITA when T&S is already herding cats.

Most importantly of all, this is racing so a few teams will figure out how to make an advantage of it without being completely pedantic. The teams that quietly make the best of the situation usually are the ones who win.

Eric Rood

Also, this will probably get explained at the drivers' meeting in addition to how cars will be controlled during the track switchover, which was still TBA when I asked a week or so ago.

If you're at the track (as I expect you will be), pay attention while Nick/Jay/Dick mentions the switchover.

If you're not at the track, I'll get the scoop and post it on the liveblog. For science.

FЯeeMan

For SCIENCE!!!

and the children.

http://www.washington.edu/news/archive/52703 mdharrell

"…spend… Saturday in BS Inspection and the Penalty Box…."

I tried doing that at The Ridge last weekend just to watch the fun but Judge Phil immediately put me to work helping the Barely Legal Super Lemons with the kill switch in their '80 Corolla. It turned out the switch was fine but the car was dieseling so much that the tech inspectors had concluded it wasn't. This, in turn, was because the electric choke wasn't wired up (therefore always closed) and the vacuum system had been… modified… in some highly original ways.

Over the next two days I learned all sorts of exciting new things about Toyota throttle linkages, carb floats, vacuum lines, alternators, Hall effect sensors, distributor timing, wiring harnesses, and front brakes. The team was so gleefully eager to get back on the track for even a short interval that I kept wandering back whenever I saw their car returning to the pits, and thanks in part perhaps to my assistance they set, in Phil's words, "the track record for most trips by the wrecker for a single car during the course of a weekend." I feel pretty good about having played some small role in that.

LeMons HQ finally shut us down when, with four minutes to go in the race, we were trying to figure out why the car once again wouldn't start. This time it seemed to have something to do with its new trick of intermittently setting its carburetor on fire.

Awesome weekend. Great bunch of guys. I hope they make it back next year.

OA5599

"I tried doing that at The Ridge last weekend just to watch the fun but Judge Phil immediately put me to work helping the Barely Legal Super Lemons"

A guy died and was told to report to hell. When he got there, he was directed to a room where a gorgeous naked woman was waiting. "Your assignment", he was instructed, "is to have sex with this beautiful woman for all eternity."

"What kind of punishment is that?", the man asked.

"Hers."

Judge Phil can be a real sadist sometimes.

John Bianchi

We are ready….but you are right "..screwed if it rains", but the forecast looks good. SBR #600 (previously #6 )